KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[Farewell into the night]

Don't forget this mutant:

This was a decent game. A bit harder than UFO.

I played it a lot at the time. It was cheap but it was very close to the original in atmosphere. There was a sequel planned since years but it became vaporware, sadly.

I LOVED this game. My dad who was a big fan of the original got me this disc, cause he thought it was an official sequel to the first XCOM which was released in russia as UFO: Enemy Unknown. It turned out to be not a microprose game, it was a bit ugly and clunky but still very enjoyable.

Sequel is dead tho :sad:

What game are you talking abaout?

Thank you for reply, but I still doesn't know the title. It doesn't load for me <3

 

[Bigg Boss]

UFO Extraterrestrials Gold Edition.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Thank you! very much! <3

 

[Haba]

Xenonauts 2 February Update!
Goldhawk InteractiveCreator
February 19, 2020


Hello everyone - it's time for another update on our progress. Sorry about the recent radio silence!

Closed Beta V11 was released on our Experimental Branch just over a week ago now (full changelog here), and we've hotfixed it a couple of times since then. We're expecting to do one more hotfix over the next couple of days and then we'll be pushing V11 out to our Stable branch for everyone to play. The feedback from testers on this build has been pretty good so far, as there's several cool new features and the gameplay balance is quite a bit better than in previous builds.

The first big feature in this build is the Modular Armour, which was explained in the previous update. This feature proved a pain to implement but I personally think it's a good addition to the game that is only going to get better as we add in the various researchable modules you can unlock (jetpacks, tactical visors, etc).

As implementing this system required us to redraw the soldier armour artwork, we also took the opportunity to redesign some of the armour suits to make them feel more "military" - which I think makes them look much better than they did before. The final art for the light and heavy variants of the starting tactical armour is shown above; the "heavy" variant being a module that adds more weight but offers more protection.

The second big feature is the full introduction of the MARS support vehicle, a single-tile vehicle that is tougher and faster (though less accurate) than a soldier. It is built in the workshop and can be equipped with any infantry weapon, and is capable of crushing cover items / smashing through walls - which makes it pretty fun to play with on the battlefield!

The cool thing is that the modular armour system also applies to the MARS. In addition to allowing upgradeable armour that keeps the unit relevant throughout the game, we could for example add an optional module called "Heavy Plating" that makes the MARS tougher, but reduces the number of Time Units it has. You could therefore switch between "scout" and "tank" configurations depending on the mission you are facing; basically, the modules are all about giving players choices and options to play with.

We'll be looking at the MARS modules and researchable upgrades in Closed Beta V12 in the next couple of weeks, and we'll also be expanding on some of the significant new strategic mechanics that arrived in a hacky test form in V11 (e.g. Orbital Bombardment, Signal Uplinks, Proliferation, etc) which I'll be explaining in more detail in my next update ... which will hopefully be arriving in the next four to six weeks!

Looks good so far, besides the game breaking bugs ofc.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

bloodlines had a few game breaking bugs. still a masterpiece.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I just want this to be good. I really enjoyed the last one.

 

[Grotesque]

is the new air combat in?

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/538030/view/2858051782465039653

Xenonauts-2 August Update
We're back once again with a monthly update. A lot of under-the-hood stuff for you this time but also a few cool things to show you as well, so let's get started with one of those...

2D Art

Take a look at this swanky new 2D art for the Phantom Interceptor...

We've also made some progress on the end-game exosuit armour artwork and the Fighter UFO design - hopefully we'll be able to show those off to you soon.

Dynamic Map System

We have now moved to a system which generates maps dynamically when missions are loaded, rather than from a pre-baked file. This was something we thought might not be technically possible at the start of the project but thankfully we've managed to overcome the issues.

This means, for example, that a map does not require a separate variant to be created for every different UFO type it supports - it can just load in the required UFO depending on the mission.

You can read more about the ins and outs of this system over on the forums if you're interested but the short version is that we're now able to facilitate the following (among many other things):

• Xenonaut base defence mission maps will be able to mirror the layout of the base being attacked, as they did in X1
  
• Much greater support for map randomisation
  
• Saves players a load of hard drive space and makes our updates much smaller downloads!

New Ground Combat Maps / Art Style

Over the last couple of months, a lot of work has gone into creating new maps and improving the consistency of the ground combat visuals. We’ve spent a lot of time on the Desert and Polar biomes, and have also started work on the Farm.

We’re still experimenting with the finer points of the art style, but the main improvement has been to retexture our new assets in a consistent style that draws out additional detail. You can see a before / after shot of one of our retextured vehicles below (before is at the top, after is at the bottom):

We’ll be showing off larger sections of the maps in future updates once we’ve nailed down the overall art style, but the work is coming along nicely so far!

Biome / Map Randomisation and Raids

All of this ground combat work has enabled us to create a new set of Desert, Polar and Farm maps for the small UFO's - these maps use a mix of randomised and preset areas, which provides a great balance of "authorship" (ensuring the map is consistently fun to play) with a healthy dose of variety.

In addition to these, we've added a few Raid maps for the Desert, Farm and Polar biomes. Raids exist in the game already, but eventually they will occur more frequently and support all the major biomes instead of being limited to the Dockyard biome as they are at present.

These maps will feature capturable alien bombs, so the player will be able to seize some Alenium for successful completion - this should make them much more strategically rewarding and less of a chore than the Terror Sites in Xenonauts 1 and classic X-Com could be.

This dovetails nicely with our other work to minimise map repetition. In Xenonauts 1, the location of your starting base had a significant bearing on the type of map you would see on a regular basis: if you started in a Desert region, for example, you'd be cycling through the small UFO desert maps in rapid succession rather than seeing any of the other maps and biomes that the game had to offer.

Our new system attacks the problem in multiple ways. Firstly, it tries to randomise the map biome if at all possible, as each area of the Geoscape can support up to two biomes.

Once the biome is set, the game will then check a list of the last 100 maps you've played across all your different campaigns. It'll then try to select one you've not already seen from a pool of relevant maps. Raids will contribute even greater variation to this system, as they'll allow the game to place missions in biomes you may not encounter much otherwise.

Quick Notes

Here's a brief summary of some of the other development work that's been taking place...

New UFO Style

The new UFO art style that we've been showing off recently has finally made it into the ground combat (these are still untextured models at present as the internal floorplans are still being tested). We've also managed to replicate the "hull hiding" system from X1 that makes it easier to fight inside UFOs, with additional support for the 3D rotatable camera. We’re planning 8 crashable UFO's in the full game total, and we'll show those off as they are finalised.

Fog of War / Shroud

We've been working on cleaning up the visuals for this - there were some annoying edge cases where bits of terrain would clutter up the edge of the player's non-visible area and some significant work has gone into resolving this.

Final Thoughts

In the short-term, we'll be working on further level design to get all the new content in there. At the moment, it currently takes around one week per biome so we should hopefully be in a good place to start planning another beta build in around a fortnight.

 

[SenisterDenister]

Seen: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ic-planetary-defence-simulator/posts/3009550?

Xenonauts-2 October-ish Update
Yes, we know it's not October any more but, as we all know, time is a mere construct of our limited human perception...Ok, we're sorry but we've been busy!

New Backer Builds
The biggest news for October is that we released our first backer build in about four months (V14), and we're continuing to push out hotfixes for the various issues people are encountering with the game. You can check out full build notes here.

This build is mostly a test build to help us find and squash most of the bugs that have accumulated over the last four weeks, but the game is rapidly becoming more playable. We're hoping to release the next major update (V15) in two weeks with some significant visual updates and new mechanics, and this should hopefully mark the point where someone can sit down and properly play a multi-hour campaign of the game.

That's a huge deal and we want to thank the community once again for bearing with us up until this point. The overwhelming majority of you have been tremendously patient and supportive - it makes a big difference.

Most of the new features that appeared in V14 were features from the original Xenonauts that we knew we had to include in Xenonauts 2 to make it a proper sequel (e.g. night missions, proper base defence missions, etc) but we're now in a position where we can start to implement entirely new features. Systems like the soldier training system and the soldier stress system were implemented earlier in development and should just require a few days of coder time to get working again, and even entirely new systems such as base structure adjacency bonuses shouldn't be too much work to implement. Some of these new elements will start to arrive in V15.

The visuals of the game aren't going quite as well as the code side of things, but we're still making progress there. Work continues on the new strategy UI screen backgrounds and if all goes well they will be complete in a couple of months. We're recruiting a new artist to design the weapons that are still using placeholder art (e.g. the early-game Accelerated ballistic weapons) and to do some of the research artwork for the weapons. We've finished some more UFO designs. We're starting to take a look at some of the 3D character models and consider which ones need replacing or retexturing, and we'll be ironing out a few of the more obvious animation issues in the near future too.

The environments in our tactical missions should look noticeably better in V15 too. We're currently focusing on the ground textures in the various biomes and have been drawing inspiration from the ground textures in the first Xenonauts, which to me hit a sweet spot where they weren't detailed enough to be distracting but were still interesting enough that you didn't have to fill an area with props to avoid it looking boring. Although there's still plenty of work to be done, the maps already feel a lot more cohesive than they did six months ago, and once the ground textures are done it'll be much easier to update all the other terrain in each biome to match their style.

Finally, when our fixes on V14 are done the game should now be playable up to the fifth crashable UFO (of 7 non-unique ones). This represents over half the length of the campaign and is more than enough playable time for us to start proper balancing work, so from V15 onwards we'll start acting on player feedback about balance issues and specific problems in the game that are acting as barriers to enjoyment. In short, V15 will be the point we start treating Xenonauts 2 like a playable game.

Early Access
Given this, we've reached the point where we can start to plan our Early Access launch in earnest.

We're not yet able to give you a firm date but February is looking likely (which means we'd ideally need a final launch build ready for late January).

We'll give more details on Early Access when V15 arrives - we're currently targeting Tuesday 17th November for this. Hopefully some of you will be willing to spend a little time testing the game and giving us your thoughts on that day, as it'd help us a lot with our planning!

 

[geno]

I've played v14 and it is still broken but I like how they are finalling doing something with the AI and how the UFOs from Xeno1 have returned. Kudos on the geoscape, at this point is a huge improvment over the first game (not like it was hard to make a better geoscape to be honest)

 

[80s Stallone]

can someone explain to me why it takes 10 years to port this game to unity

 

[udm]

I've played v14 and it is still broken but I like how they are finalling doing something with the AI and how the UFOs from Xeno1 have returned. Kudos on the geoscape, at this point is a huge improvment over the first game (not like it was hard to make a better geoscape to be honest)

How does LOS work now? Is it finally true LOS or does it still use that weird "line of miniboxes" system from Xenonauts 1?

 

[geno]

I've played v14 and it is still broken but I like how they are finalling doing something with the AI and how the UFOs from Xeno1 have returned. Kudos on the geoscape, at this point is a huge improvment over the first game (not like it was hard to make a better geoscape to be honest)

How does LOS work now? Is it finally true LOS or does it still use that weird "line of miniboxes" system from Xenonauts 1?

I can't tell if it's true LOS but I didn't notice the problems I (anecdotally) had with the first game. This time you can be sure that if you enemy can see you, you can see the enemy.

 

[Grotesque]

XENONAUTS-2 NOVEMBER UPDATE
POST INFO
POSTED BY GOLDHAWKNOVEMBER 10, 2019

As we enter November Xenonauts-2 is progressing well, but before I talk any more about our progress I want to apologise for the lack of updates. I’ll make an effort to do better in future, but if you haven’t seen an update for a while you can always check our latest build releases here or check to see if we’ve posted recent updates on our Kickstarter page or on our forums.


The last update here was talking about the release of Closed Beta Build V5, and our latest release on the Experimental Branch is now up to V9.2. A lot has changed in the plast five months but the biggest change has been a reversion to the more complex strategy layer seen in the first Xenonauts. As we approach Early Access our focus has been on turning what we have into a playable game, which means has meant cutting the ideas that were not a clear improvement over the first game.

As such, we ran a Kickstarter poll about whether people would prefer the side-on single base in the older versions of X2 or wanted to return to the top-down multiple base system from the first game, and the community was overwhelming in favour of the multi-base system. This is now in the game, along with the air combat mechanics from the first game. We spent quite a while experimenting with a new turn-based air combat system but ultimately we couldn’t make it better than what we had in X1, so we’ve switched that back too.



These changes have been a good thing in the context of the project, but it is also important we ensure that Xenonauts 2 does not end up being too much like the first game. So in this update I’ll highlight one of the new systems that should make the game more interesting – the modular armour system. This is also a good excuse to show off some of the updated designs for our armour, as we’re keen to make the soldiers in the game a bit more “military” in appearance than they were in the first game.

You can see what we mean in the image above, as the two leftmost figures represent the starting Tactical Armour and the heavier Combat Armour variant, whereas the figure on the right shows an upgraded version of the armour that uses alien materials. The later armours have also been reworked to look more military and I think people will prefer their style over what we had in the first game!

Our forums have a longer post on the planned Modular Armour system, but the basic idea is that each armour has a series of upgrade “modules” that you can switch out on each soldier depending on how you want to customise them. You can give your soldiers Heavy Armour if you want to increase their survivability, but this reduces their carrying capacity. You could give them a Rebreather that makes them immune to gas / smoke damage at the cost of slightly reducing their Accuracy, or equip them with a jetpack that allows them to move vertically if you think they can spare the weight. More exotic items can be researched and unlocked too, such as visors that increase Accuracy but reduce your overall Armour.

You can freely mix and match this equipment depending on the soldier or the mission (e.g. you might not want a Jetpack inside an underground alien base), which gives you a lot more flexibility than was present in the first game.



No firm date has been set for our Early Access quite yet, but we’re looking at January next year – about eight weeks from now (including the festive season). There’s a lot of work left to do to polish the game up but we’re now in the happy situation where I can sit down and properly play the campaign (instead of just testing features), which means the usability and game balance are improving quickly. Now almost all of the “big” features are functional we can devote our energies to fixing up the small things that have been holding back the gameplay, so soon we’ll hopefully have a fairly decent game for you all to play in Early Access!


Copyright © Goldhawk Interactive 2011-2016

 

[eXalted]

They are going to add pilots accuracy, etc.?

Already in in, umm, y'know... OpenXcom.

 

[baud]

They are going to add pilots accuracy, etc.?

Already in in, umm, y'know... OpenXcom.

If it works in other games, why not copy it, if it makes sense?

 

[TemplarGR]

I wish them the best, but i am not optimistic. The early access is around 1 year late already. It was supposed to come last year.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I think it will be fine. Rather be late than released botched then some DIRECTORS CUT comes out three years later which is what the real game should have been.

 

[Haba]

They are going to add pilots accuracy, etc.?

Already in in, umm, y'know... OpenXcom.

Potential Future Implementation:
I haven't entirely given up on the idea of finding a better air combat system. On reflection, I think our last attempt at the turn-based air combat failed because it was trying to do a very similar thing as the X1 air combat system, but doing it worse. Coming up with something fundamentally different is more likely to be successful.

So, what are the aims for any new system?

• Each battle is relatively fast to play through
• The skill comes from playing percentages / weighing up the risks and rewards of different moves, rather than "twitch" skills like pressing a button with perfect timing
• To keep things varied, battles shouldn't always play out the same way each time even if the same combatants are involved
• Ideally, the system would allow pilot progression

[...]

There's also room for pilots that can level up with experience, because the weapons have hit %s and pilots could simply grant a +hit % bonus as they level up. [--]

Go lobby for it on the forums.

Definitely is something I'd add. Rescue missions for downed pilots, etc.

 

[Sergiu64]

Rescue missions for downed pilots, etc.

So the rest of it is good - but one of the Aftermath/Afterlight/whatever had rescue missions from pilots and I remember disliking them as they were boring and repetitive. Maybe I'm not the ideal target for the Tactical genre though - I tend to like first few missions and then get super bored by the repetitiveness of it all.

 

[Haba]

Rescue missions for downed pilots, etc.

So the rest of it is good - but one of the Aftermath/Afterlight/whatever had rescue missions from pilots and I remember disliking them as they were boring and repetitive. Maybe I'm not the ideal target for the Tactical genre though - I tend to like first few missions and then get super bored by the repetitiveness of it all.

Well, that is kinda the problem with all of the missions TBF. I wouldn't want to have more mandatory missions on top of everything else, but diversity would be welcome.

Autoresolve or some % chance for the pilot to survive by himself would hopefully take care of that.

 

[geno]

We've been planning an Early Access launch in late February 2021 for a while now, but we've now decided to push that back a few months. Instead, we'll be running an open beta that will go live in March. You can sign up for the open beta (it's called a "Playtest") on the Steam page for Xenonauts 2.

Why have we made this decision?
The simple reason why we have made this decision is that our February launch date was dictated by our finances, but we've now been able to secure the funds we need to finish development without having to rely on Early Access sales. This gives us a bit more flexibility about our launch date than we had previously.

While we think Early Access is a good thing overall, launching a game before it is ready can backfire spectacularly - a lot of people don't understand that it's quite normal for an unfinished game to be broken or not much fun to play. This can lead to bad Steam reviews that will remain in place and make the game look bad even after it is finished and those problems are fixed, which we really want to avoid.

I think there's currently too much missing content in Xenonauts 2 and too many similarities to the original Xenonauts for us to be confident launching into Early Access right now. Since we don't urgently need to start taking customer money, it makes sense for us to play it safe and delay the launch while we continue to improve the game. Instead, we'll run an open beta so interested players have a way of getting involved.

Open Beta details:
The open beta for Xenonauts 2 will begin in March and will be run using the new Steam Playtest function, which allows us to give people access to a temporary copy of Xenonauts 2. This beta will be entirely free and will be open to everybody, but will be deactivated once the game launches into Early Access.

We're doing this because we want to start building a community around the game. Part of the reason we wanted to launch into Early Access was because there are so many people who want to play Xenonauts 2 and help out by offering feedback, but there was only a narrow window of time where they were able to back the Kickstarter or buy the game on Xsolla to get access to the Closed Beta. The community were a huge help during the development of Xenonauts so we want to get as many people involved in the project as possible, and the Open Beta seems a great way of doing that.

The content of the builds and the release schedule will be very similar to the current Closed Beta builds. We'll probably cut out the final ~30% of the game (which is currently barely functional anyway) from the builds during the open beta just so players have something interesting to look forward to when the Early Access launches, but other than that it'll be the full version of the game.

(For those of you that prefer GOG to Steam - I've not spoken to them yet, but I imagine we'll also be able to run the Open Beta in a similar arrangement via GOG Galaxy too.)



Taken together, these two things should help us have a much better Early Access launch. The game will be more polished and playable with a few more months of work, and hopefully we can impress enough people during the Open Beta that we'll have a large community of people ready to buy the game on launch. Hopefully that explains the reasons behind our decision, and I hope anyone who was excited about the Early Access is keen to get involved in the open beta instead - once again, you can sign up for it here!

 

[Strange Fellow]

The simple reason why we have made this decision is that our February launch date was dictated by our finances, but we've now been able to secure the funds we need to finish development without having to rely on Early Access sales.

 

[Haba]

He bought GME stonks.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...gic-planetary-defence-simulator/posts/3144723

Xenonauts 2 - March Update

PaulMode7Collaborator
March 30, 2021
Greetings everyone - we'll start this update by addressing the delay to the Open Beta.

One factor here is that Project Lead Chris is currently working reduced hours due to a personal matter - here's a note from him:

"It's unlikely there will be any public releases (including the open beta) for the next four weeks or so. I'm now not sure exactly when the open beta will happen, but I'll let you know once my plans do start to return to normality. However, the time I do have has been spent on project management and I'm therefore hoping overall progress on the project won't suffer too much as a result of my absence. We've also made some decent overall progress this month."

So, apologies for that delay - we're aware that people are very keen to jump in and we appreciate that it's difficult to keep waiting. However, given the above and the fact that the game continues to receive regular updates to (and useful feedback from) the Closed Beta, we're going to have to ask you to continue to be patient on that front. Thanks!

With all that in mind, let's take a look at our recent progress…

Air Combat
We've placed a significant amount of emphasis this month on air combat.

Beta V18 arrived at the start of the month and that contained our new air combat damage model where UFOs / aircraft now have both Armour HP and Hull HP, with weapons doing different amounts of damage to each (damage is always assigned to Armour HP first). This allows us to differentiate between different types of tough UFOs, as different weapons are stronger against UFOs with lots of Armour HP compared to those that just have vast amounts of standard Hull HP.

This change added some welcome variety to the air combat, but it didn't change the fact that the air combat can be very repetitive. We've therefore spent the last couple of weeks trying out some new ideas to make it more reactive - the key change being that we've added a vision radius to all air combat units, added clouds that block vision (and weapons cannot fire though), and set UFOs to only go into attack / escape behaviour when they spot your aircraft.

The basic idea is to generate more interesting combat scenarios. The early tests suggest that these new systems do make everything more interesting but we'll probably need to build further upon them to make the most out of them.

Item Accuracy Effects
We've added a generic system that allows us to set basic logic on items that modifies their accuracy - e.g. if a soldier has less than 60 Strength, give -1 Accuracy for each Strength below 60. This is interesting because it allows us to add unique values to certain weapons, for example we could say Laser weapons are easy to use so a soldier gets +0.5 Accuracy for each point of Accuracy below 65. This potentially means Lasers would remain viable weapons for rookie soldiers even towards the end of the game, without making them overpowered in the early game.

We've also been looking at how to support Recoil. We can now easily add in the system from the original Xenonauts (the 60 Strength example given in the paragraph above) but we've been experimenting with a system where the accuracy of each subsequent shot in a burst is reduced by a set percentage. For example, a weapon with 20% recoil and 50% hit chance would have the following hit chances in a 5-round burst: 50%, 40%, 32%, 25%, 20%.

This setup means we should be able to permit the option for longer bursts. Short bursts are relatively accurate but cost a lot of TU per shot, whereas longer bursts are more TU efficient but waste ammo.

This becomes interesting because you can do two things - firstly, we can add in a recoil penalty for certain weapons depending on whether they have moved (representing a bipod). So a machinegun might be able to shoot relatively accurate long bursts provided the shooter had not moved, whereas only short bursts would be worthwhile if the user had moved. Secondly, we can use the generic system mentioned above to modify Recoil based on the Strength of the soldier so that stronger soldiers suffer less from the effects of recoil.

Taken together these systems just allow us to differentiate the weapons a bit more and give the player a few more tactical decisions, without rendering weapons like the LMG completely useless if they aren't fired from a stationary position. I imagine modders will also find them useful tools.

General Progress
We've added quite a lot of new art for various vehicle weapons, we've added support for keybindings, we've made a number of usability improvements to the tactical combat based on feedback on our Steam demo, and we've added proper jetpack movement to the game too. There's also been lots of smaller fixes / additions not worth individually mentioning.

Many thanks for reading and for staying up-to-date with our work - as ever please do join us on Discord, the forums or the Steam community if you have any questions.